PAY FORWARD: CHAPTER 39 OF UNDERCOVER

“You are a very lucky young lady.”

I am sitting in Shelly Canton’s office. She is eying a report from behind her massive mahogany desk. She smiles from across the desk.

“You are HIV negative, and all of your other STD tests reveal negative results.”

I breathe a sigh of relief. My eyes are tearing up. I do not deserve this report. I deserved to be HIV positive. I expected to be HIV positive.

Shelly continues.

“I want you to realize just how lucky you are. I want you to know that Crystal Meth kills in a number of ways. I want to make it perfectly clear that if you choose to go back out there, you will most likely not be this lucky again.”

I am silent. I am feeling as if someone just handed me forty more years of life.

“What will I do now?” I don’t have a clue how to continue living without hope of returning to Hunter. Returning to Hunter would include the risk of using Crystal, along with the risk of sure death.

“I cannot answer that question for you,” Shelly says, looking directly into my eyes. “But I can make some suggestions.”

“Okay,” I respond weakly. Relief continues to flood my body. “Knock yourself out.”

Shelly smiles, then her face takes on a serious expression.

“You must first of all, do whatever you have to do, do anything you have to do, to stay away from Crystal Methamphetemine. You need to know that it has a very low recovery rate. You cannot afford to take chances.”

I am silent. Shelly continues.

“Second,” she sighs quietly, “and this is not going to be easy. You must not try to go back and save Hunter. You cannot save Hunter. If you go back to try to rescue Hunter, or to see him for any other reason, you will die.”

My eyes are spilling over. Shelly has given my life back, then taken it away again.

“You are just as addicted to Hunter as you are to Crystal Meth. If you seek out Hunter, you will use Crystal Meth. If you use Crystal Meth, you will die, and that is aside from all the other problems your relationship with Hunter involves.”

“I am not just addicted to Hunter,” I argue, “I love him. My relationship with Hunter is not a drug. It is not some cheap addiction to a drug.”

Shelly is sympathetic. Her face is kind. She speaks again.

“Vandy, I am not saying that your relationship was always an addiction. I understand quite clearly that it was not.” She hesitates. “However, it has become associated with methamphetamine. Seeing Hunter will trigger that response, and even if he were trying to stop using, you would be the last person who could help him.”

“Are you saying that seeing me also makes him want to use the drug?” I am hoping I have misunderstood.

“Yes, Vandy, that is what I am saying.”

The world as I have known it is turning upside down.

“Then you are saying, that the only way I can save Hunter, is to never see him again.”

I thought I saw tears in her eyes too.

“Precisely.”

Tears are flooding from my eyes and down my cheeks. My vision is blurred. I want to tell her she can take her forty years back. What good are they to me now?

“But the rest of my life without Hunter is death.”

“It only feels that way right now. There is life after Hunter.”

“But I’m not sure it is any life I want.”

“I understand that, but trust me. You cannot be drug free with Hunter. There are too many drug associations in that relationship, and that is even if he were ready to stop using drugs, which was not the case when you last saw him.”

“What will I do with my life, now? What is there to live for, to look forward to?”

“May I make a suggestion?”

I am sinking. What difference does anything make? She can say whatever she pleases. I nod.

“You cannot save Hunter, but you can give hope to others like him. Millions of Hunters are suffering and dying from drugs and hopelessness. If you truly love Hunter, do not try to go back into your old life. You must pay forward.”

“Pay forward? What does that mean?”

“It means that you pay back whatever love Hunter provided to you, whatever hope he provided for you in love relationships, to someone in the future instead of to the one who gave it to you in the past. You pay forward instead of paying back. Does that make any sense?”

“Partially, but how do I do that?” I was still drowning in pain. Even if she could explain what she meant, I wasn’t sure I cared, wasn’t sure it mattered.

“I have been working with you for a few months, and I have noted that you have an ability to move people emotionally. Sometimes, it is almost as if you are the counselor, and I am merely a spectator. You should use your special gift to help others overcome addiction. I believe that you have what it takes, and this is not something I tell all of my clients.”

“I don’t deserve that, Shelly. Thank you so much for believing in me. I know I have done nothing to be worthy of your praise.”

I was shocked. In spite of my pain, something was rising like a rush from my feet upward. It was the emergence of hope, my spiritual rebirth.

“That’s okay,” she comforted. “I did not deserve it either. Some day I will share my own story with you, but for now just be aware that I am also paying forward.”

My pain remained intense and real, while hope was reborn within me. The Great Spirit of light battled the spirits of darkness for control of my life.

“I choose life,” I heard myself say. “ I will pay forward.”

 

PAY FORWARD IS CHAPTER 39 OF UNDERCOVER; TO READ PREVIOUS CHAPTERS; CLICK LINK BELOW:

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